Darkest Night
by shannyfish
Summary: Jemma wakes up and can't go back to sleep. Post 3x02.


"Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise." ~ Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

* * *

There had to be a better word for exhaustion, something more intense. Whatever it was, that was where Jemma was. She couldn't sleep, not unless she was touching Fitz. He hadn't complained, though she didn't think that he would. Fitz had been overjoyed and hadn't wanted to be more than three feet from her. That had made things a little tricky when they'd gotten home and Bobbi needed to check her over.

Home.

It was such a foreign thought.

"You're safe, Jemma… Sleep," he whispered to her.

She'd been staring at the wall, for some reason she had woken up...to make sure that this wasn't all some cruel dream. Fitz had been there still, unmoved, allowing her to sleeping with her head in his lap. The planet she'd been on, though...it still haunted her. It was like it still existed even though she was back with SHIELD and with Fitz.

There were no monsters.

Not there.

Not that could get her.

"I can't," she finally whispered and sat up, straightening and staring right at him. In all of their years together, they'd both changed...grown...but really...deep down, they were the same people they'd been. Deep down, they still had that connection that she'd desperately missed after Fitz had been changed. Jemma was fairly sure that absolutely nothing would change that. Whatever it was, she was glad that it was there.

"You need to," he insisted. "Or-or I could get you something to eat...Bobbi said you should eat."

Bobbi had said a lot of things and Jemma was just thankful that she hadn't hooked her up to tubes and wires and pumped her full of everything that they thought she needed. She could have easily set up a saline drip, nutrient bag, and something to help her sleep. Bobbi, though, she understood...she sympathized...she something…

"Not hungry," she found herself saying even though she realized that she was starving. The real truth was that she was so exhausted...she didn't think she had the strength to eat...and that she didn't want to be without Fitz...not even for five minutes...not for another second.

"Come here then," Fitz said as he held out an arm.

Jemma realized that in all of those months away...the ones that felt like a lifetime trapped in some inescapable hopeless nightmare...this was all she'd ever wanted to get back to. The thought of Fitz...of wanting to get back to him...that was what had motivated her to continue on. She just still wasn't so sure how she still had done it. The monster-

Fitz's arm wrapped around her and she laid her head in the crook of his neck. His arms were warm and comforting and she found herself suddenly tired again, like she could sleep. "We could talk...you haven't talked much…"

He was right.

She really didn't feel up to it.

With the others.

To the questions that they'd all have. She'd been lucky enough that Bobbi had been calling the shots. Bobbi had told Coulson that everyone needed to leave her alone, except Fitz, and that all of the questions could wait until she was rested and felt up to it. "Tell me what I missed," Jemma suggested so lowly, that only Fitz could hear as her eyes started to slide shut again.

But this was Fitz.

He wasn't going to mind a couple word responses.

He wasn't going to push.

It was Fitz.

"None of that matters," Fitz argued.

"They're family, Fitz," she reminded gently, her eyes not opening.

She heard him sigh, but then he seemed to settle and he eventually started to talk. "Coulson lost his arm, but you already knew that… He's been in a rather foul mood, going through replacements far too quickly. May went on vacation and never came back. Mack has been bloody grumpy at everything and everyone...especially the Inhumans." Fitz continued and the comfort wasn't in the information he was relaying because she vaguely remembered Bobbi trying to fill her in when she was examining her, but his voice. It was what she'd wanted to hear all that time on that planet. "Hunter and Bobbi have been acting weird...but I mean so has everyone else. And then Skye-"

"Bobbi was calling her Daisy," Jemma spoke up.

"You're right," Fitz said. "But Coulson still calls her Skye...Skye...Daisy...Skye-Daisy… Does it really matter?"

"It matters."

"It didn't to me," Fitz confessed.

Jemma rolled her face until her nose pressed against his skin. He smelled clean and like Fitz. She knew that before she'd been whisked away by the monolith, that the smell of Fitz wasn't something that she'd realized that she'd known. But she had. And she'd missed it. "Hush now."

"I never stopped-"

"I know."

"Let me say it, Jemma."

"You don't have to." She was quiet for a long moment. "I knew you were coming for me...but me being on another planet wasn't helping things...and I knew that."

"I took too long."

"I'm alive, Fitz. I'm here."

"I know," he whispered.

She listened to him as he took in a deep breath and she allowed herself to start to drift. She was safe there with Fitz. Safe and sound. Eventually, she let go. To allow her mind be taken by the darkness of the fatigue...the exhaustion...everything...she let it take her...because she knew that Fitz was there.

Home.

Fitz was her home.

No more monsters.

No more running for her life.

No more surviving.

She was home...with Fitz.

* * *

The End.


End file.
